Category Archives: Food & Drink

What a blessing it is to be able to eat, not just plenty, but well. In rural Montana, the availability of truly good produce was extremely limited.

Garden fresh produce was even more scarce, as the growing season was very short and competition with wildlife made it extremely challenging. Because of this, it was very easy to fall into steady diet of processed foods and readily available animal products.

Even as a meat eater, I knew my diet was sorely lacking in nutritive variety. Sherry, on the other hand, needed a whole foods plant based diet, which was pretty much unsustainable.

The fruits available at the store were often gross and devoid of flavor, having been picked green and shipped thousands of miles to reach us. To top it off, selection was horrible, unless you liked lots and lots of apples.

Now, it seems, every week we get to add some new, exotic fruit to the menu. Sherry is pleased as peaches and my need for meats has greatly diminished.

Well, it’s an eggplant, lettuce, & tomato sandwich. Sounds revolting, right? It’s not bad! Bear with me and I’ll let you in on how we “baconize” the eggplant.

Sherry is really shooting for a “Whole Foods Plant Based” diet and I’m trying my best to be supportive. I’m not completely on board with veganism, but it’s really doing good things for us both.

During our routine trip to the local farmers market, we were gifted with some free Japanese eggplant. Great… I hate eggplant. We politely accepted and Sherry promptly went bout finding ways to make it palatable to the haters [that’d be me].

And then she found it – ELTs! By skinning the eggplant, slicing it into thin strips, and marinating it in a mixture of liquid smoke and our favorite savory spices, then cooking it on low heat until it reaches a slightly crunchy, slightly chewy state, we had successfully made a bacon substitute.

Granted, it’s really nothing like real bacon but the important textures and flavors were all there and once the brain had grasped the fact that this was both tasty and healthy and I could eat a ton without fearing the reaper, well, I was overjoyed.

From there it’s all standard, unless you want to keep with the vegan theme [we did], you can use mustard and Best Foods Vegan mayonnaise, which is a great substitute for Miracle Whip – if that’s your jam.

To ice the cake, we had a pile of lemons that were gifted to us, as they’re quite plentiful here on the Big Island. We made some fresh squeezed lemonade with stevia to replace the sugar, poured it over ice. Whew… Dirt poor in paradise really isn’t so bad. 😉